Category: Recommended

The COVID-19 pandemic has undoubtedly been the most traumatic period of time in many people’s lives. The devastation wrought is incalculable when you take into account things that aren’t easily measured, such as mental health, physical abuse and food insecurity.
The harsh truth, however, is that virtually none of it was necessary. The real damage occurred as a result of the decisions made by global, national and local health and government officials, acting in concert according to some predetermined plan.
The Swedish ‘Just Enough’ Way

The featured 45-minute documentary, “COVID, Tango and The Lagom Way,” won the Outstanding Achievement award in the Los Angeles International Indie Short Fest film festival in January 2021.
The film was made by filmmaker, relationship counselor and tango aficionado Claudia Nye, an Argentinian living in the U.K., who “trapped in lockdown between the two extremes of coronavirus deniers and lockdown orthodoxy,” became intrigued by the approach adopted in Sweden.
During 2020, Sweden, at the resolute guidance of chief epidemiologist Anders Tegnell, did not universally lock down, shutter small businesses, close schools or implement mask mandates. Nye and photo-journalist Sean Spencer decided to investigate the country’s chosen strategy.
“The Lagom Way” refers to the Swedish notion that keeping to the “middle of the road” is best and extremes are to be avoided. Put another way, it’s the principle of “just enough” — not too much and not too little. It’s about being “reasonable.” “We don’t want to hurt anyone unnecessarily,” Tegnell says, “but we want to have as good effect as possible.”
Hence, only some schools were closed during certain periods of time, and only office workers were asked to work from home to minimize crowding in public transportation. Retail shops, gyms and restaurants remained open, some recommending social distancing and masks, but not as a strict rule.
So, while residents in many other parts of the world were told to stay home or face fines or jail time, Swedes were tango dancing in Stockholm, and people were simply asked to take “common sense” precautions based on their individual circumstances.
Seniors and other high-risk individuals were asked to stay home, social distance and mask up, while all others were free to live much as they normally would. As noted by Tegnell, “In Sweden we have chosen a voluntary way and it’s proven to be sustainable and effective.”
Tegnell on the Swedish Approach

Nye says that whenever she would bring up the Swedish approach on social media, she was told it was a “right-wing” strategy or that it is irrelevant because Sweden is so sparsely populated.
When asked to comment on these retorts, Tegnell denies both, saying the strategy chosen was completely apolitical, and while Sweden may be slightly less densely populated than some countries, overall, many areas are very densely populated, such as the capital of Stockholm. Hence, that cannot account for their lower death toll.
According to the Imperial College of London model (which has repeatedly been proven to be fantastically incorrect), Sweden would have been looking at a death toll of 80,000 by the end of June 2020 if it didn’t lock down.
Alas, the true number, by mid-September 2020, after no lockdowns at all, still only stood at 5,880, a vast majority of whom were elderly with comorbidities. In fact, of those, only 872 were a direct result of COVID-19. The rest had one or more conditions that contributed to their death.
When asked about how she feels about the idea of locking down entire societies to protect the vulnerable, like herself, an elderly lady shakes her head, saying it must be like “torture.” She doesn’t see how anyone would think it a good idea.
Global data also raises questions about the effectiveness of lockdowns and other measures. Nye presents a number of graphs and charts demonstrating that pandemic lethality has been oversold, as total mortality for 2020 has not spiked above norms.
Interestingly, Tegnell also points out that teachers have turned out to be among the professions that have the lowest risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19. They have quite a bit of data on this, since most schools remained open for face-to-face teaching, and masks were not required.
In fact, teachers appear to be protected by being around children and young adults in the school setting, Tegnell says. It has not put them at risk. He also correctly points out that COVID-19 is a disease that primarily affects the very old and those in ill health. The risk for everyone else, particularly children, is very low, he says.
This finding is in stark contrast to the fear displayed by teachers in many other countries, In the U.S. and U.K. in particular, many teachers are still terrified of reentering the classroom and want closures to continue. As noted in New York Magazine,1 remote learning has been a catastrophe in more ways than one, and teachers’ unions share a big part of the blame for robbing children of their education and parents of their livelihood.
Freefall Economy — Was COVID-19 Responsible?

While small businesses in tourist areas did suffer economically due to travel bans imposed by other countries into Sweden, most retailers have stayed afloat. This too is in stark contrast to many other countries that forced businesses shut. Nye points to headlines stating that coronavirus is responsible for putting the global economy into freefall, but she questions whether the pandemic was the real cause.
Six months before COVID-19 hit, the World Economic Forum announced that China was taking a leading role in the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which is part and parcel of the Great Reset agenda. At the time, it was reported that China was dumping the world market prices, sending the global stock markets into a tailspin. So, might the pandemic be a cover for an already crumbling financial system?
She notes that as COVID-19 spread around the world, it remained concentrated in the G-20s, the 20 largest economies of the world. Was that coincidental? Was it unintentional that the world’s largest corporations boomed, raking in enormous profits during the pandemic, while small businesses were faltering and being driven into bankruptcy? All things considered, it sure doesn’t seem accidental.
Functional Leadership

A relationship counselor herself, Nye explains how and why many world leaders have fundamentally failed in their management of this crisis, and why Tegnell’s approach works. While some European media have claimed Swedes are “more responsible” than, say the British, Nye dismisses such notions. In reality, it’s about basic psychology.
She goes on to explain what’s called “transactional analysis,” which is based on the premise that we all have three ego modes: parent, adult and child. We’ve all been children, we’ve all been parented and, hopefully, have grown into sensible adults.
A relationship is healthy when communication between two individuals occurs on the parallel. Adult to adult, two people can make joint plans, for example. Parent to parent, we can buy a home and raise a family. Child to child, we can dance and play together. “Trouble ensues when the relationship becomes crossed,” Nye explains.
Tegnell’s communication to the Swedish people is one of adult to adult, and by encouraging self-responsibility, he builds a relationship of trust. U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s draconian lockdown edicts, however, are that of parent to child, triggering people to respond either as the fearful child or the rebellious child. It’s a dysfunctional relationship based on intimidation that breeds fear and distrust.
Speaking of the intricacies of tango dancing, but alluding to the art of leadership in general, Nye says: “When a leader doesn’t listen, abruptly changing his moves without warning or care, unaware of the group, bumping into people, he will be instilling confusion and fear in his partner. The dance falls apart …”
Another Round of Fearmongering

Clearly, many world leaders are either unaware of how to generate trust, or that simply isn’t one of their priorities. Perhaps the instilling of fear really is the primary goal. At least it seems that way, judging by recent media headlines. They now warn a new SARS-CoV-2 strain in South Africa appears resistant to antibodies from the original virus.2
The Novavax and Johnson & Johnson vaccines don’t work as well against this South African variant, or against the mutated variant circulating in the U.K.3,4 WebMD warns “COVID-19 may hide in brains and cause relapses.”5 In other words, the invisible enemy is still at large, and unless you remain hypervigilant, it will get you, one way or another. There’s simply no safety to be had.
It’s not surprising then to “learn” that we have to mask up even if vaccinated.6 One among several reasons for this is because “it would be difficult to know if people without masks have actually gotten vaccinated. They could be an anti-masker,” Medivizor writes.7 Yes, god forbid we can’t immediately determine whether someone is out of compliance with an illogical rule.
In a poorly disguised effort to make compliance with the absurd more “hip,” The New York Times put out an article promoting double-masking as a fashion statement. “Single masks are out; singles masks are in. Well-fitted, two- and three-layer masks are in; whatever you had before is out,” NYT reporter Tara Parker-Pope writes.8
Not content to stop there, some “experts” are promoting the use of three9 or even four10 masks. Tripling and quadrupling recommendations sparked a mild backlash, however, with other experts encouraging the return to common sense, as breathing is an important life function as well.
As detailed in “The Fog of COVID War,” pandemic responses in the U.S. and elsewhere have seesawed back and forth, from one extreme to the next, leaving nothing but confusion in its wake. In March 2020, we were told face masks offered no protection against the new virus and only symptomatic individuals should use them. In June, everyone had to wear them because there may be asymptomatic super-spreaders among us.
Interestingly enough, that same month, the World Health Organization admitted that asymptomatic transmission was “very rare.” If that’s true, then why were everyone told to wear face masks to prevent asymptomatic spread?
Not long thereafter, research involving nearly 9.9 million individuals revealed not a single case of COVID-19 could be traced to an asymptomatic individual who had tested positive, effectively destroying the asymptomatic spread narrative.
Yet the calls for double, triple and quadruple masking came after it was established that, unless you have symptoms, you’re of no risk to anyone. Similarly, renewed calls for lockdowns of healthy populations continued as well.
All of this is what Nye refers to when she talks about what happens when leaders don’t listen, abruptly change their moves and remain unaware of group dynamics. It instills confusion and fear, and the dance of social cohesion falls apart.
Are We Dealing With Bad Leadership or a Planned Coup?

The question is, is this done on purpose? Or are world leaders just bad leaders? Many believe it’s the former, and have presented evidence to support their theories.
Among them is financial guru Catherine Austin Fitts,11 who in an interview for the documentary “Planet Lockdown” describes the plan to use this crisis to engineer a total remake of world currencies and our entire way of life.
Comparing the move to herding sheep to a slaughterhouse, Fitts explains how the pandemic is lining people up to depend on their governments for protection from an invisible enemy (COVID-19) and then using fear to keep people from living what once was considered a normal life.

The herd mentality includes encouraging debt entrapment to the point that people become desperate for any type of cash flow that can help them meet their day-to-day living expenses, until they willingly give up their rights in exchange for any relief offered to them.
I’m screaming to humanity: Don’t be scared! Be cautious. Be smart. Use common sense. But don’t be scared. Return back to life. Reengage in life. ~ Dr. Vladimir Zelenko

The bottom line is that a slavery system, steeped in the ideologies of transhumanism and technocracy, is being created right under the noses of the people of the world — and the current lockdowns, closing of small businesses and the redefinition of “normal” are all part of a planned global governance system that will end sovereignty and individual rights.
Embrace Fearlessness
The emotional response allowing this global takeover to bulldoze forward is fear. The remedy, therefore, is fearlessness. As noted by Dr. Vladimir Zelenko who, like Fitts, has become convinced that what we’re in the middle of a hostile takeover by a global elite that aim to enslave us, psychologically, financially and physically: 

“It’s unbelievable the crime that’s been done on the human psyche. I’m screaming to humanity: Don’t be scared! Be cautious. Be smart. Use common sense. But don’t be scared. Return back to life. Reengage in life.”

The reason you don’t need to live in fear is manifold. First of all, the lethality of COVID-19 is on par with influenza, unless you’re very old or chronically ill.12 Ninety-four percent of those who have died in the U.S. died with SARS-CoV-2, not from it.13
Secondly, we now know of several treatments that work. Importantly, we know that if treated early enough (within the first five days of symptoms), the risk of hospitalization and death is extremely low. Early treatment also appears to eliminate the risk of “long-haul” symptoms, according to Zelenko.
Part of releasing fear is getting clarity and not being in a state of constant confusion. Educating yourself about the facts, first-hand, is the best way to achieve clarity within your own mind. As noted by Zelenko:

“I see the world now with such clarity … It’s no longer confusing. It’s a binary choice. It’s very clear who’s on what side. And here are the teams: There are those who want to live a life of God, conscious … No one has the right to enslave another human being. That’s one approach. The other is [internment] … an attempt to enslave the world population …
If you look at the United Nations and the World Economic Forum, they have a 30-year plan … That’s all spelled out in their charter. Just look at it … There’s myriad of politicians calling for the Great Reset …
What we’re really fighting for is the soul of man … Every person is being asked one simple question: Either bow down to God and have the divine presence protect you or you’re going to bow down to Bill Gates.”

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/02/11/lockdown.aspx

1 Deficiency in which of the following nutrients is suspected of driving the decline in wildlife populations across the northern hemisphere?

Vitamin D
Vitamin B12
Thiamine (B1)
Thiamine deficiency has been identified in dozens of animal species and is now suspected of driving declines in wildlife populations across the northern hemisphere. This means our diets are likely to be low in thiamine, thereby raising the risk for thiamine deficiency in the human population. Learn more.
Vitamin A

2 By referring to COVID-19 vaccines as “vaccines” rather than gene therapies, the U.S. government is violating which of the following laws?

The U.S. National Health Care Act
42 U.S. Code Section 2651
Vaccines Act of 2019
15 U.S. Code Section 41
By referring to COVID-19 vaccines as “vaccines” rather than gene therapies, the U.S. government is violating its 15 U.S. Code Section 41, which regulates deceptive practices in medical claims. The mRNA injections are gene therapies that do not fulfill a single criteria or definition of a vaccine. Learn more.

3 In 2017, Moderna’s experimental mRNA treatment using lipid nanoparticles was “indefinitely delayed” because it:

Wasn’t deemed safe enough to test in humans
But, as STAT reported in 2017, the treatment was “indefinitely delayed” because it “never proved safe enough to test in humans.” Learn more.
Was too expensive to produce
Was already on the market
Was taken over by another company

4 According to Swedish data, which did not close schools during 2020, teachers’ risk of COVID-19 is:

As high as that of 80-year-olds
Among the lowest of any profession
Swedish data shows teachers are among the professions that have the lowest risk of hospitalization and death from COVID-19. Learn more.
Double that of the general population in the same age group
Lower than that of children

5 If AI takes over jobs and your ability to earn an independent income is destroyed, the introduction of a universal basic income may occur, which:

Provides greater equality
Gives you guaranteed freedom

Makes you dependent on the wealthy elite in control
… only a fraction of people would likely find work in this AI-driven world, which would necessitate the introduction of a universal basic income. This may initially sound like a good thing, but when your ability to earn an independent income is destroyed, you become dependent on, and at the mercy of, the elite that are in control of that income and the resources surrounding it. Learn more.
Is a form of security

6 Which of the following supplements can help mitigate the toxic effects of glyphosate?

Glutamate
Magnesium
Zinc
Glycine
To mitigate the toxic effects of glyphosate, you can take an inexpensive glycine supplement. Learn more.

 

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/02/15/week-169-health-quiz.aspx

“The New Normal” documentary by Happen.network investigates speculation that the COVID-19 pandemic was planned — or at least is being exploited — by a group of tech elite who are dictating policy to governments globally in order to push a totalitarian agenda.
There are many moving parts involved, from bad data that are inflating COVID-19 mortality rates to problems with PCR tests that are leading to very high false positive rates. A falsely inflated death rate drives more fear among the population, while a misleadingly high number of cases can be used as justification for more business closures and lockdowns.
All of this serves to further the ultimate agenda to “build back better” and “reset” the world to a “new normal.” At the root of the agenda, however, is a significant economic and power shift that only a minority of people are aware of, being driven by the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
Fourth Industrial Revolution Will Integrate AI With Humans

The First Industrial Revolution, which took place in the early to mid-1800s, brought in the use of steam power throughout the world. The Second Industrial Revolution took place from the late 19th to early 20th centuries, and involved progress in steel, electric and automobile industries. 1
The Third Industrial Revolution, according to Klaus Schwab, founder and executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), “used electronics and information technology to automate production,” whereas the Fourth Industrial Revolution, he says, has already begun and “is characterized by a fusion of technologies that is blurring the lines between the physical, digital and biological spheres.”2
It’s the further emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and integration with humans. In August 2020, for one example, Elon Musk revealed a company he founded called Neuralink, which involves a surgically implanted microchip that’s connected to your brain and synced with AI, with the goal of one day allowing humans to control artificial limbs or even engage in telepathy. Musk described it as “a Fitbit in your skull with tiny wires.”3
While some have heralded the innovation, others described it as a cyborg — the merging of a human and a machine. The video features Kai-Fu Lee, who wrote the book “AI Super-Powers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order.”
A former executive at Google China, he believes there will be a rapid displacement of jobs as robots replace workers, and in the next 10 years, so many jobs will be replaced that people will need to find happiness without working. Amazon has also stated that fully automated shipping warehouses, in which robots will replace humans fulfilling orders, may be just 10 years away.4
Half of Employees Will Need ‘Reskilling’ by 2025

As part of their Jobs Reset Summit, WEF also stated that 50% of all employees will require reskilling by 2025, “as the ‘double-disruption’ of the economic impacts of the pandemic and increasing automation transforming jobs takes hold.”5 WEF claims that 85 million jobs may be eliminated by 2025, while 97 million more may be created to address “the new division of labor between humans, machines and algorithms.”
But the reality is that only a fraction of people would likely find work in this AI-driven world, which would necessitate the introduction of a universal basic income.
This may initially sound like a good thing, but when your ability to earn an independent income is destroyed, you become dependent on, and at the mercy of, the elite that are in control of that income and the resources surrounding it. Universal debt forgiveness may also emerge — in return for the forfeiture of all rights to private ownership going forward. As for as its effects on people, Schwab wrote:6

“The Fourth Industrial Revolution, finally, will change not only what we do but also who we are. It will affect our identity and all the issues associated with it: our sense of privacy, our notions of ownership, our consumption patterns, the time we devote to work and leisure, and how we develop our careers, cultivate our skills, meet people, and nurture relationships.
It is already changing our health and leading to a ‘quantified’ self, and sooner than we think it may lead to human augmentation. The list is endless because it is bound only by our imagination.”

In June 2019, the U.K. released a white paper announcing it had established a partnership with WEF “to shape the global governance of technological innovation.” In their policy paper, “Regulation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution,” it’s stated:7

“Technological breakthroughs in areas from artificial intelligence to biotechnologies are now heralding a Fourth Industrial Revolution, with the power to reshape almost every sector in every country. Our Industrial Strategy positions the UK to make the most of this global transformation.”

The Great Reset

Politicians, business leaders and even the royal family are among those who have recently begun calling for society to “build back better.” This slogan is part of the larger “Great Reset” campaign, as Time magazine published on their cover in November 2020.8 Time’s owner and co-chair,9 Marc Benioff, is a member of WEF’s board of trustees as well as an inaugural chair of their Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
The very purpose of “building back better” is to do away with what was once “normal” and replace it with something different. According to WEF, this entails “reinventing capitalism”10 and replacing it with a “stakeholder economy.”
Also known as stakeholder capitalism, Forbes described stakeholder economy as “the notion that a firm focuses on meeting the needs of all its stakeholders: customers, employees, partners, the community and society as a whole.”11
The idea of stakeholder capitalism has been around since at least 1932, and was also endorsed by nearly 200 CEOs of large corporations in August 2019.12 However, it is now being accelerated as part of The Great Reset. As the documentary noted, WEF made predictions about the world in 2030 via a social media post. Among them:

You’ll own nothing — and you’ll be happy about it.

Whatever you want, you’ll rent, and it’ll be delivered by drone.

Western values will have been tested to the breaking point.

U.K.’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s new policies also fall in line with WEF objectives. This includes a ban on petrol and diesel cars by 2030, blocking vehicle access to side roads and new pay-per-mile taxes that could make driving very expensive. It’s almost as if the U.K. is attempting to remove ownership of cars.
Autonomous driving may be the next scenario, which again sounds like a good thing on the surface, but ultimately serves to take away autonomy. AI will be so much better at driving than people, the documentary explains, that eventually most people will be afraid to drive. Soon after that, humans won’t be allowed to drive at all.
The Creation of a ‘Useless Class’

Yuval Noah Harari, a professor in the department of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, warned of the dangers of AI, such that technology might disrupt human society and the very meaning of human life in numerous ways.13 Data colonialism and digital dictatorship are very real possibilities, as is the division of the world into wealthy elites and others, who end up as “exploited data colonies.”
Unprecedented inequality will emerge, as a “useless class is created”— “useless not from the viewpoint of their friends and family,” Harari says, “but useless from the viewpoint of the economic and political system. And this useless class will be separated by an ever-growing gap from the ever more powerful elite.”
An AI arms race is already underway between the U.S. and China, and most other countries will be left behind, disrupting global balance. According to Harari:14

“Just think what will happen to developing economies once it is cheaper to produce textiles or cars in California than in Mexico?
And what will happen to politics in your country in twenty years, when somebody in San Francisco or Beijing knows the entire medical and personal history of every politician, every judge and every journalist in your country, including all their sexual escapades, all their mental weaknesses and all their corrupt dealings?

Will it still be an independent country or will it become a data-colony? When you have enough data you don’t need to send soldiers in order to control a country.”

Rockefeller Foundation Laid Out Pandemic Scenario in 2010
The Rockefeller Foundation and Bill Gates are also supporters of The Great Reset.15 In 2010, The Rockefeller Foundation released a report titled “Scenarios for the Future of Technology and International Development,” which uses scenario planning to explore ways that technology and growth/development and government might play out over the coming decades. One of the scenarios they detailed was a pandemic with some eerie similarities to COVID-19:16

“In 2012, the pandemic that the world had been anticipating for years finally hit. Unlike 2009’s H1N1, this new influenza strain — originating from wild geese — was extremely virulent and deadly.
Even the most pandemic-prepared nations were quickly overwhelmed when the virus streaked around the world, infecting nearly 20 percent of the global population and killing 8 million in just seven months, the majority of them healthy young adults.
The pandemic also had a deadly effect on economies: international mobility of both people and goods screeched to a halt, debilitating industries like tourism and breaking global supply chains. Even locally, normally bustling shops and of office buildings sat empty for months, devoid of both employees and customers.”

As the pandemic continues, “national leaders around the world flexed their authority and imposed airtight rules and restrictions, from the mandatory wearing of face masks to body-temperature checks at the entries to communal spaces like train stations and supermarkets.”

The increased authoritarian control and oversight of citizens continued even after the pandemic ended, and was welcomed at first in exchange for “greater safety and stability.”

In December 2020, the Rockefeller Foundation released “Taking Back Control: A Resetting of America’s Response to COVID-19.”17 Among its advice is ramping up COVID-19 testing, including in schoolchildren — a problematic scenario not only due to its exorbitant cost ($42.5 billion in the U.S. for February to June 2021) but also because of false positives that will arise from the flawed COVID-19 tests.
Could this be a way to intentionally boost infection rates in order to justify more lockdowns — and further economic destruction of the poor and middle class?
Why Now Might Be the ‘Perfect Time’ for a Reset

If there were a covert plan for a global takeover, the COVID-19 pandemic presents the perfect scenario for its success. First, a problem is created — coronavirus is released and a global pandemic is declared. Next, a reaction is created — namely, fear. This is ramped up and lockdowns ensue, forcing businesses to close and economies to be destroyed.
The final stage is when the “solution” is created — in this case, the masses of unemployed people could receive a universal basic income that’s credited onto digital IDs backed by Gates’ Microsoft and the Rockefellers, which are implanted into your hand. Smart cities ensue, along with 24/7 surveillance. This is made possible by the rollout of 5G networks, an essential “upgrade” in performance for digitizing society, surveillance and data harvesting.
There are signs of resistance throughout the world, however, including the Police for Freedom March, which took place in November 2020 in Spain to protest the violation of citizens’ freedoms and protect civil liberties.18 The World Freedom Alliance, formed in Stockholm, Sweden, in November 2020, also aims to promote worldwide freedom.19
In these times of uncertainty, some have compared it to living in a fog of war — a fog of COVID war. Yet, seeing through the fog is the first step to victory.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/02/13/the-new-normal-documentary.aspx

Any strategy that successfully manipulates public opinion is bound to be repeated, and we can now clearly see how the tobacco industry’s playbook is being used to shape the public narrative about COVID-19 and the projected post-COVID era.
In 2011, after many years of raising awareness regarding genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and industrial agriculture, we decided we needed a new game plan. Educating people through our newsletter was great, but we realized the best way to expose Monsanto — a leading GMO advocate and patented seed owner at the time — was to get them to engage directly and ensure national attention.
To that end, Mercola.com funded the signature gathering in California that initiated Proposition 37, the right to know what’s in your food by ensuring proper GMO labeling. We spent more than $1 million for the Prop 37 initiative, plus several million dollars more for GMO labeling initiatives in other U.S. states in the following years.
This initiative forced Monsanto to engage with the public directly to defend their toxic products and dangerous business practices, all while receiving national coverage in the process. 
The Monsanto Case
Monsanto spent tens of millions of dollars attacking anyone in their way, but they did so indirectly, just like the tobacco industry did before them. This is the core take-home of what I’m about to describe next.
They used a public relations team to do most of their dirty work — paying scientists and academics to voice their “independent opinions,” influencing scientific journals, and getting journalists and editorial boards to write favorable and influential pieces to help them maintain their lies and influence minds.
Still, while the spending of tens of millions of dollars to influence voters resulted in a narrow defeat of Prop 37, the new, widespread awareness of GMOs, pesticides and industrial agriculture eventually led to Monsanto’s demise.
In 2013, in a last-ditch effort to salvage its tarnished image, Monsanto hired the PR firm Ketchum. As noted in a HuffPost article by Paul Thacker,1 “Monsanto hit reboot with Ketchum,” which “created a campaign called GMO Answers, and used social media and third-party scientists to offer a counter narrative to allay concern about Monsanto’s products.”
The GMO Answers’ website is set up to allow professors at public universities answer GMO questions from the public — supposedly without remuneration from the industry. But over the years, evidence emerged showing that these academics are far from independent, and often end up getting paid for their contributions via hidden means, such as unrestricted grants.
University of Florida professor Kevin Folta is one prominent example described in my 2016 article “Scientific American — Another Monsanto Bedfellow.” In that article, I also review how GMO Answers co-sponsored a panel discussion about GMOs in March that year with the media and partnerships division of Scientific American.
At the time, Jeremy Abatte, vice president and publisher of Scientific American, insisted the event was not a Ketchum event but a Scientific American event. Few bought his reasoning though, and many ended up filing Scientific American into the chemical biotech shill category.
Having purchased Monsanto at the end of 2016, Bayer continued the strategy to rely on PR firms for public acceptance. In the article2 “Bayer’s Shady PR Firms: Fleishmanhillard, Ketchum, FTI Consulting,” U.S. Right to Know reviews the many deception scandals involving these firms. A key discovery was evidence showing “there are objective strategies to silence strong voices.”
After investigating the strategies used by Monsanto and Bayer, we can now see that the same playbook is being used by Big Tech and Big Pharma to shape the public narratives about COVID-19 and the Great Reset. Again, a central facet of these campaigns is to silence critics, in particular those with large online followings, including yours truly.
I have been publicly labeled a “national security threat” to the U.K. by Imran Ahmed, a member of the Steering Committee on Countering Extremism Pilot Task Force under the British government’s Commission for Countering Extremism and the chief executive of the Centre for Countering Digital Hate (CCDH).
According to Ahmed, I and others who question the safety and necessity of a COVID-19 vaccine may be prone to violent extremism. This defamatory statement clearly has no basis in reality whatsoever. Rather, it’s part of the propaganda aimed at destroying the opposition — in this case the opposition to the technocrats driving the Great Reset agenda, which spans across social, economic and health related sectors.
As reported by the National Vaccine Information Center, which was also on the CCDH list of national security threats:3

“The anonymously funded CCDH also has an office in Washington, D.C. and the defamatory publicity campaign created in December 2020 was designed to not only discredit NVIC’s four-decade public record of working within the U.S. democratic system to secure vaccine safety and informed consent protections in public health policies and laws, but to destroy our small charity.”

Publicis Is an Organizing Force in the Great Reset Deception
Public deception is now being carried out at a mass scale, and the whole thing appears to be led and organized by another major PR firm, this time the Publicis Groupe, self-described as “one of the world’s largest communications groups,”4 which represents major companies within the technology, pharmaceutical and banking industries.
Publicis is also a partner of the World Economic Forum, which is leading the call for a “reset” of the global economy and a complete overhaul of our way of life.
These companies, in turn, have various partnerships with the U.S. government and global nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). Publicis itself is also a partner of the World Economic Forum,5 which is leading the call for a “reset” of the global economy and a complete overhaul of our way of life.6 As you will see, Publicis’ fingerprints can be found throughout the net of censorship and misdirection that is now being cast across the digital landscape.
The Publicis Groupe has manipulated what people think about commercial products for nearly a century. Over that century, they have bought or partnered with targeted advertising avenues, beginning with newspapers, followed by radio, TV, cinema and the internet. More recently, they’ve branched into Big Data acquisitions and artificial intelligence platforms.
To understand the power PR companies such as Publicis have today, you need to understand the role of the free press. While pro-industry advertising worked well for decades, there was still the irksome problem of the Fourth Estate, a term that refers to the press.
The problem for industry was that professional investigative journalists working for magazines, newspapers and broadcast outlets would write in-depth exposés, outing the truth behind deceptive advertising and countering industry propaganda with science, statistics and other documented facts — and when a free press with honest reporting based on verifiable facts actually does its job, ineffective or toxic products are driven off the market.
The answer that industry came up with in the late 20th century to combat truth in journalism was, pure and simple, to control the Fourth Estate with advertising dollars. News organizations will simply not run reports that might harm the bottom line of its advertisers.
By further partnering with the “big guns” of media — such as the Paley Center for Media — Publicis and its industry clients have been able to influence and control the press to restrict, indeed virtually eliminate, your ability to get the truth on many important issues.
Publicis, Big Pharma and NewsGuard
To start off this sprawling web of industry connections surrounding Publicis, let’s look at its connections to the self-appointed internet watchdog NewsGuard. NewsGuard rates websites on criteria of “credibility” and “transparency,” ostensibly to guide viewers to the most reliable sources of news and information.
In reality, however, NewsGuard ends up acting as a gate keeper with a mission to barricade unpopular truth and differences of opinion behind closed gates. Its clearly biased ranking system easily dissuades people from perusing information from low-rated sites, mine included. 
NewsGuard received a large chunk of its startup capital from Publicis. NewsGuard also has ties to The Paley Center for Media, mentioned earlier. For clarification, The Paley Center is composed of every major media in the world, including Microsoft, AOL, CBS, Fox and Tribune Media. One of its activities is to sponsor an annual global forum for industry leaders.7
NewsGuard is housed in The Paley Center in New York City. In November 2015, Publicis’ chairman of North America, Susan Gianinno, joined The Paley Center’s board of trustees.8
Leo Hindery,9,10 a former business partner of the co-CEOs of NewsGuard, Steven Brill and Gordon Crovitz, is also a former trustee and director of The Paley Center. Taken together, NewsGuard has fairly influential connections to The Paley Center besides being a tenant in their building.
As mentioned, Publicis represents most of the major pharmaceutical companies in the world, and since so much of its revenue comes from the drug industry, it’s not far-fetched to assume Publicis might influence NewsGuard’s ratings of drug industry competitors, such as alternative health sites.
Publicis, Big Pharma, NewsGuard and Big Tech
Next, let’s add a layer of Big Tech into the mix. Publicis, which represents Big Pharma, not only has the ability to influence the public through NewsGuard, but it’s also a Google partner,11,12 which allows it even greater ability to bury undesirable views that might hurt its clientele. 
NewsGuard is also partnered with Microsoft, initially through Microsoft’s Defending Democracy Program.13 Through an expanded partnership announced in 2020, Microsoft Edge users gained access to NewsGuard for free, and Microsoft Bing gained access to NewsGuard’s data.14
Publicis, Pharma, NewsGuard, Big Tech, Government and NGOs
Expanding the web further onto government and NGO territory, we find that NewsGuard is also connected to the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Defense and the World Health Organization. All three are listed as NewsGuard partners.15 NewsGuard is also partnered with:16

Public libraries
Schools
MSN
Bing
Trend Micro and many others

To summarize, the web around Publicis now includes international drug companies, NewsGuard, Google, Microsoft, the U.S. State Department and DoD, the WHO and the World Economic Forum. Mind you, this is not a comprehensive review of links. It’s merely a sampling of entities to give you an idea of the breadth of these connections, which when taken together explain how certain views can be so effectively erased.
Add in ‘Anti-Hate’ Group and Google-Trusted Health Sites
But we’re not done yet. NewsGuard’s health-related service called HealthGuard17 is also partnered with WebMD, Medscape and the CCDH — the progressive cancel-culture leader18 with extensive ties to government and global think tanks that recently labeled people questioning the COVID-19 vaccine as national security threats.
In 2017, WebMD was acquired by Internet Brands, a company under the global investment firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR) umbrella. KKR also owns several other health-related internet brands. Since WebMD owned Medscape, it too now belongs to the KKR Internet Brands as well.
Together, HealthGuard, CCDH, WebMD and Medscape have launched a public service campaign called VaxFacts. The goal of the campaign is to “provide facts and tools to help consumers make informed decisions about vaccines,” WebMD reports.19
In tandem with that campaign, Google is funding fact-checking organizations to the tune of $3 million, with the aim of countering “vaccine misinformation,” and NewsGuard maintains a “Coronavirus Misinformation Tracking Center” that includes a “Top COVID-19 Vaccine Myths Tracker.”20
WebMD dominates health searches done through Google and shares user information with Google’s advertising arm and other third-party firms — a practice that is illegal in Europe.
What this means is DoubleClick, Google’s ad service, knows which prescriptions you’ve searched for on the site, thus providing you with personalized drug ads, and Facebook knows what you’ve searched for in WebMD’s symptom checker, as well as any medical diagnoses you received. I reviewed these findings in “WebMD and Healthline exposed Violating Your Privacy.”
Since most of its revenue comes from advertising, WebMD is far from an independent source of well-researched health news. For example, it has been caught shilling for Monsanto, publishing industry-friendly “articles” that are really paid advertisements known in the media world as advertorials.
Ten years ago, WebMD was also caught publishing a fake online depression screening test. In actuality, it was an advertising trick for the antidepressant Cymbalta, and there was no way for test takers to get a clean bill of mental health.
Summary

So, to recap, we find connections between the drug industry, NewsGuard/HealthGuard, educational institutions, Big Tech companies like Google, Microsoft and Bing, the U.S. State Department and DoD, global technocratic institutions like the WHO, national and global NGOs like the CCDH and the World Economic Forum, and dominating health websites like WebMD and Medscape.
Again, this is far from an exhaustive investigation of these kinds of connections. It’s merely a small sampling of readily obvious relationships. Toward the center of this web is the Publicis Groupe, the clients of which include major drug companies, Big Tech companies and financial institutions in more than 100 countries.21
By the way, Publicis also began investing in artificial intelligence technology in 201722 and partnered with Microsoft in 2018 to develop a global AI platform.23 It also purchased the data firm Epsilon in 2019,24 thereby establishing ownership of first-party data — a crucially valuable resource when it comes to the use of AI.
As detailed on its website, the firm’s expertise is concentrated within four main activities: communication, media, data and technology (including AI services), and all clients have access to its expertise in all of these areas.
While it’s easy to dismiss Publicis as just another ad agency, I believe it would be foolish to underestimate its power to organize the kind of coordination required to shut down vaccine concerns, anti-lockdown proponents and people trying to educate their fellow man about the dangers of the Great Reset, which is being brought forth as a “necessary” post-COVID step.
While these things may seem unrelated, they’re really not. As mentioned, the Great Reset involves everything — including health, education, government, economics, redistribution of wealth, business practices, environmental “protections” and much more.
What Can You Do?

Everything we know is set to change, and those who disagree with the mainstream narrative are troublemakers that must be silenced, lest the plan get pushed off-track by an unwilling public.
The answer to this dilemma is transparency. We must expose the machinations that allow this agenda to be pushed forward. Part of that exposure is looking at the role of big PR companies like Publicis, which helps influence the public mind so that the technocrats can maintain their lies until it’s too late to do anything about it.
Remember we DEFEATED Monsanto and we will defeat this threat to our freedom too. We simply allowed the public to learn the real truth about the issues, and that triggered Monsanto’s collapse.
I am currently working with some of the brightest minds in the tech space —cybersecurity experts and billionaire philanthropists who are very well networked. These individuals are committed to preserving your personal freedoms and liberties. We are seeking to involve a massive redo of the entire internet that will not allow tech monopolies the ability to censor the truth because it happens to conflict with their advertisers.There has been an increasing call for the decentralization of the Internet as expressed in this article on Coin Telegraph last week. This would mean that rather than web sites being hosted on centralized servers in one location their content would be stored and served from thousands if not millions of computers all over the world making it virtually impossible to censor or shut down.
We are seeking to implement a strategy that Tim Berners-Lee is proposing. For those of you who don’t know, Berners-Lee is the person that gave us the world wide web graphical interface of the internet, and he didn’t take a penny for it. Had he licensed this technology, he surely would be the richest person in the world today.
You can read more about Berners-Lee’s plan in this February 5, 2021, article in The Conversation,25 but essentially in involves data sovereignty, giving you control over your data and privacy. So, what can you do?
Please understand you play a VERY important, if not critical role in this process. The first part of the strategy is to repeat what we did with Monsanto and expose their plans. So, if you have any interest in preserving your freedoms, I strongly encourage you to share this article and my video with everyone you know so people can start to understand how they are being manipulated. This will effectively “immunize” them against the propaganda.
Secondly, encourage your friends and family to subscribe to the newsletter so you can be updated on the next steps that will be necessary to defeat these tech monopolies tyrannical attempts at control.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/02/16/publicis-groupe.aspx

The tendency is to lose muscle as you age, a condition known as sarcopenia. If you don’t do anything to stop it you can expect to lose about 15% of your muscle mass between your 30s and your 80s.1 An estimated 10% to 25% of seniors under the age of 70 have sarcopenia and as many as half those over the age of 80 are impaired with it.2

Enforced bedrest, due to hospitalization, for example, can also have a dramatic impact on your muscle mass, even if you’re younger. According to a 2015 review3 in Extreme Physiology & Medicine, you can lose 5.2% of your muscle mass in the first two weeks of bedrest. By Day 23, you can have lost up to 10% of your quadriceps muscle mass.
Not only are strong muscles a requirement for mobility, balance and the ability to live independently, but having reserve muscle mass will also increase your chances of survival4 when sick or hospitalized. Since muscle is lost far more easily and quicker than it’s built, finding ways to continuously promote and maintain your muscle mass is of utmost importance.
The Crucial Role of NAD+
As reported by Science Daily,5 scientists recently discovered that Alzheimer’s-like protein aggregates underlie the muscle deterioration commonly seen in aging, and that nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) is essential for combating this condition.

Their study,6 published in the journal Cell Reports, showed that protein aggregates (amyloid) could be blocked by boosting the levels of NAD+, a biomolecule that is also essential for maintaining mitochondrial function.

Higher levels of NAD+ were found to turn on the defense systems of the mitochondria and restore muscle function. Aggregated proteins have long been thought to be a contributor to brain aging, and this study proves aggregated proteins also contribute to muscle aging.

“The most prominent component of these protein aggregates is beta-amyloid, just like in the amyloid plaques in the brains of patients with Alzheimer’s disease,” said Johan Auwerx at EPFL’s School of Life Sciences. “These abnormal proteotoxic aggregates could serve as novel biomarkers for the aging process, beyond the brain and muscle.”

The study points out that NAD+ homeostasis is required to maintain proteostasis, i.e., the regulation of protein creation, folding, trafficking and degradation. It turns out that boosting NAD+ in later life will reduce amyloidosis (the buildup of amyloid) and mitochondrial dysfunction.

The importance of NAD+ for healthy muscle function is also reviewed in “Sarcopenia and Muscle Aging: A Brief Overview,”7 published in the journal Endocrinology and Metabolism. The paper highlights:

“… recent findings that describe key pathophysiological phenotypes of this condition, including alterations in muscle fiber types, mitochondrial function, nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) metabolism, myokines, and gut microbiota, in aged muscle compared to young muscle or healthy aged muscle.”

As indicated by the Cell Report study, this Endocrinology and Metabolism paper highlights the connection between sarcopenia and mitochondrial dysfunction in both skeletal muscle and motor neurons.
People with sarcopenia have been found to have both reduced mitochondrial oxidative capacity and inhibited NAD+ biosynthesis, and several studies have proposed that mitochondrial dysfunction in your neurons actually drive the development of sarcopenia.8
What Is NAD+?

NAD+ is a substrate for a number of important enzymes, including poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) and sirtuin 1 (SIRT1), which is known as a classic longevity protein. NAD+ is also essential in metabolic processes such as creating ATP in your mitochondria. It accepts and donates electrons and is used in oxidation-reduction reactions in the mitochondrial electron transport chain.
When the NAD+ salvage pathways in muscle are impaired, mitochondrial dysfunction and decreased muscle mass ensues.
Interestingly, what scientists have observed is that NAD+ levels decline in most tissues over time, and is associated with aging in general and is therefore thought to play an important role in many age-related diseases.
According to the Endocrinology and Metabolism paper,9 researchers have shown that when the NAD+ salvage pathways in muscle are impaired, mitochondrial dysfunction and decreased muscle mass ensues.
NAD+ boosting molecules such as nicotinamide riboside (NR), nicotinamide mononucleotide (NMN), nicotinamide (a form of vitamin B3 or niacin) and nicotinic acid (niacin) have all been shown to protect against age-related muscle disease.
How to Boost NAD+

Download Interview Transcript

Of those four, NMN is my personal favorite as it activates the NAD+ salvage pathway. As explained by Siim Land in a recent interview, featured in “Simple Strategies That Will Improve Your Immunity,” which also reviews the importance of NAD+ in COVID-19:

“A lot of the NAD that your body produces is recycled through the salvage pathway. Very little (less than 1%) of it is going to come from food, especially tryptophan or niacin. The easiest way to prevent losing your NAD as you get older or as you get immunocompromised is to promote the salvage pathway.”

I’ve previously recommended the use of NR over NMN but have since changed my stance. NR used to be considered superior because no NMN transporter — required to get it into cells — had been detected. We now know there is such a transporter, which gives NMN the advantage as it’s also a more direct NAD+ precursor.

Most of the NAD+ precursor research is done with NR and that used to be my primary choice. However, as you can see from the image above, NMN converts to NAD+ whereas NR must first be converted into NMN before it can be converted into NAD+,10 so it makes more sense to use NMN for NAD+ augmentation.
The image above also shows how niacin (NA) also finds its way to become NAD+. Niacin is also a useful supplement to use in increasing NAD+ levels. You just need to limit the dose to about 25 mg, which most is a dose low enough not to cause any flushing. Higher doses are not likely as effective as NMN and exercise in producing NAD+.
The NMN transporter was discovered11,12 shortly before my interview with David Sinclair, Ph.D., a professor of genetics and co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School. Interestingly, NMN is also Sinclair’s favorite NAD+ precursor.
Sinclair is generally acknowledged for bringing the importance of NAD+ to the world with his experiments at MIT in the late ‘90s which connected NAD+ to sirtuin activation. We discuss these issues in “The Revolutionary Science of Aging and Longevity,” the interview from which is embedded above for your convenience.
I believe one of the most effective ways of boosting your NAD+ level is to use NMN in suppository form, as this allows you to avoid most of the methylation of the supplement. Other alternatives include subcutaneous or intranasal administration, all of which are more effective than oral supplements.
Unfortunately, NMN is not sold in suppository form, so you would need to get silicone candy molds and use coconut oil to serve as binder for the NMN. The suppositories would need to be refrigerated as coconut oil tends to melt at 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Additionally, NMN is quite perishable, which is another reason to refrigerate it.  
As for the other NAD+ boosters, I do not recommend using high-dose niacinamide because in high doses it inhibits Sirt1, an important longevity protein. As mentioned above, low-dose niacin (vitamin B3) of 25 mg can be used.
Low doses of niacin, along with NMN in suppository form — both of which are precursors to NAD+ — are typically sufficient. As an added boon, raising your NAD+ also appears protective against severe COVID-19, as detailed in “Is Niacin a Missing Piece of the COVID Puzzle?” There are also NAD+ supplements available, but their price tags can be prohibitive.
Lifestyle Strategies Can Address Underlying Cause of Low NAD+
While supplements such as NMN can certainly be helpful, if your NAD is low, your best bet is really to address the underlying cause. The good news is that this can be done through simple lifestyle strategies such as exercise, sauna bathing, fasting, realigning your circadian rhythm and minimizing electromagnetic field (EMF) exposure.

One of the reasons exercise, heat exposure and fasting work to address low NAD+ levels is because they are catabolic stressors that activate AMP protein kinase (AMPK). AMPK, in turn, activates an enzyme called NAMPT, which governs the NAD+ salvage pathway.

Blood flow restriction (BFR) training can be particularly beneficial in terms of exercise. It has been shown to naturally increase your NAD level and is very safe for the elderly. You can learn more about this in “BFR Training for Muscle Mass Maintenance.”

Your circadian rhythm, meanwhile, plays a role because it is controlled by longevity genes called sirtuins, SIRT1 in particular. If your circadian rhythm is misaligned, then sirtuins are not expressed, which in turn inhibits NAMPT, thereby shutting down your NAD+ salvage pathway.
Oxidative stress and inflammation also use up and deplete NAD+, and exercise, sauna and fasting all help to reduce these. As a result, less NAD+ is depleted. So, these strategies not only improve your NAD+ production, but also reduce your body’s NAD+ consumption. The end result is a higher NAD+ baseline.

EMF exposure, which is the topic of my book “EMF*D,” is one common source of oxidative stress, so it too increases your NAD+ consumption. It does this by activating PARP, a DNA repairing enzyme. Each time PARP is activated, it uses up 150 molecules of NAD+. Hence, reducing your EMF exposure can also be an important strategy to preserve and protect your NAD+ level.

Your body also uses up NAD+ to detoxify alcohol, so if nightly drinking is part of your routine, consider giving it up. To learn more about how healthy lifestyle strategies such as the ones mentioned here can improve your NAD+ level, consider reading through the paper “Healthy Lifestyle Recommendations: Do the Beneficial Effects Originate from NAD+ Amount at the Cellular Level?”13
NAD+ Is a Crucial Antiaging Component

So, to summarize, raising your NAD+ level and keeping it high has many important health benefits, from supporting mitochondrial function, which is crucial for general health and longevity, to protecting against severe COVID-19 and age-related muscle loss.
The great news is that this can easily be done by implementing the healthy lifestyle strategies reviewed above — exercise, sauna, fasting and recalibrating your circadian rhythm — while simultaneously avoiding things that deplete your body of NAD+, such as EMF exposure and excessive alcohol consumption. On top of that, supplements such as NMN together with normal doses of niacin can help boost your NAD+ in the short term.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/02/15/nicotinamide-adenine-dinucleotide-benefits.aspx

A video said to have been filmed in Shijiazhuang, China, showed people walking with a waddle as they left a hospital, presumably after having received a new anal swab test for COVID-19. The Shijiazhuang Internet Report Centre said the video was fake, and it’s since been taken down, but not before millions of people viewed it.1
While the image of people waddling like penguins after an anal swab might be an exaggeration, what’s not fake is the anal swab test for COVID-19. Released in Beijing, the test is said to be a more accurate method for detecting the virus.
According to Forbes, Li Tongzeng, deputy director of the respiratory and infectious diseases department at Beijing You An Hospital, cited research that SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, survives longer in the anus and feces than in the respiratory tract. Due to this, an anal swab may be able to more accurately detect mild or asymptomatic cases than a nose or throat test.2
While the tests are said to be only for “high-risk cases,” they’ve reportedly been given to unsuspecting individuals, including travelers arriving in Beijing, those in quarantine centers and even 1,000 children and teachers who were exposed to the virus.3
80% Surveyed Were Against the Invasive Testing Method

In a poll on Chinese social media site Weibo, 80% who responded said they “could not accept” anal swab testing for COVID-19.4 While the test can be performed from a stool sample submitted by the patient, if that’s not possible the test involves inserting a cotton-tipped swab one to two inches into the rectum.
“If we add anal swab testing, it can raise our rate of identifying infected patients,” Tongzeng was reported as saying on state-run news channel CCTV. “But of course, considering that collecting anal swabs is not as convenient as throat swabs, at the moment only key groups such as those in quarantine receive both.”5
One Chinese study published in Future Medicine in August 2020 reported that, in some patients, anal swabs tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 while the virus was not detected in throat swabs or sputum swabs. They concluded, “Anal swabs might be the optimal specimen for SARS-CoV-2 detection to evaluate the hospital discharge of COVID-19 patients,”6 although the study was limited in that it involved only four patients.
Another study conducted by researchers at the University of Nairobi, Kenya, suggested that SARS-CoV-2 may be shed through the gastrointestinal tract via feces. They analyzed literature to determine if the virus may persist in stool even after a negative nasopharyngeal test.7 In a review of 12 studies, they found 107 cases in which a positive rectal, anal or stool SARS-CoV-2 test was positive after a nasopharyngeal test was negative.8
“Therefore,” they noted, “there is some evidence of the persistence of SARS-CoV-2 in the body secretion in convalescing COVID-19 patients. It is noteworthy that a significant proportion of these patients are within the pediatric age group.”9
In a BMJ rapid response article, Dr. Arturo Tozzi, a pediatrician with the University of North Texas, suggested fecal excretion of SARS-CoV-2 may persist for one to 11 days after excretion in sputum in 23% to 82% of adults. He suggested rectal swabs could be used to test patients with COVID-19 symptoms or known COVID-19 exposure who test negative via throat or sputum tests. He further stated:10

“Indeed, the available data suggest that some patients test positive on rectal swabs in the very first days of COVID-19 onset (Lescure et al., 2020).11

To make a few examples, in a review article, Tian et al. (2020)12 reported fecal PCR positivity 2?5 days after sputum in in 36%?53% of patients, while Xiao et al (2020)13 found that 39/73 hospitalized patients had viral RNA in their feces from 1 to 12 days. Therefore, the occurrence of oro-fecal route points towards the usefulness of rectal swabs at the very onset of the disease to confirm, or even diagnose, COVID-19.”

EU Plans to ‘Follow the Science’ for Anal COVID-19 Testing

Time will tell whether anal swabs become more popular for COVID-19 testing in China and around the world. For now, it’s still generating snickers among European Commission spokespeople, but when asked by a journalist whether anal swabs could be implemented for EU-wide COVID testing, a spokesperson said they would “follow the science.”14
European Commission spokesperson for health, food safety and transport Stefan De Keersmaecker said, “We will go where the science takes us. So, if science takes us to the butt, we will consider this. But of course I don’t think I can add a lot on this … We indeed rely heavily … on the input from scientists, and so we leave it to the scientific world to see what are the best approaches.”15
There are critics of the anal testing, as well. Forbes reported that Yang Zhanqiu, a pathology expert from Wuhan University, told China’s Global Times that nose and throat swabs were most efficient, adding, “There have been cases concerning the coronavirus testing positive in a patient’s excrement, but no evidence has suggested it had been transmitted through one’s digestive system.”16
Dr. Amesh A. Adalja, senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security in Maryland, also raised concerns about the nature of the test, telling Health that not only is it unknown whether anal swabs are useful for detecting contagious cases but, “I also worry that such messages may discourage people from getting tested. For most purposes, including screening asymptomatic individuals, nasal or saliva samples are sufficient.”17
Submitting stool samples would be one way of getting around the unpleasantness of the test, as stool samples are already collected for a variety of other medical tests, according to Joanne Santini, professor of microbiology at University College London. She told Insider that anal swabs are “the obvious thing to do.” According to Insider:18

“Santini explained that the virus attaches to the human body using a receptor called ACE2, and there are many ACE2 receptors in the gut. The viral load — the amount of virus shedded — can also be higher in the feces, especially if someone is suffering with gastrointestinal problems caused by coronavirus. And viral shedding can last for longer in the feces than in sputum.

‘Even though a common way of being infected is through respiration, I think there must be some infection happening through the gut via the mouth,’ she said. ‘There is evidence that SARS-CoV-2 in feces is infectious, just like other viruses, such as norovirus and other coronaviruses.'”

Rampant Problems With PCR Tests
It remains to be seen whether anal COVID-19 tests will catch on, but as it stands positive reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) tests for COVID-19 are plagued with problems. The PCR test is not designed to be used as a diagnostic tool as it cannot distinguish between inactive (noninfectious) viruses and “live” or reproductive ones.19
Inactive and reproductive viruses are not interchangeable in terms of infectivity. If you have a nonreproductive virus in your body, you will not get sick from it and you cannot spread it to others. Further, many if not most, laboratories amplify the RNA collected far too many times, which results in healthy people testing “positive” and being ordered to take off work and self-isolate for two weeks.
The higher the cycle threshold (CT) — i.e., the number of amplification cycles used to detect RNA particles — the greater the chance of a false positive. While any CT over 35 is deemed scientifically unjustifiable,20,21 the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommend running PCR tests at a CT of 40.22
A test known as the Corman-Drosten paper and tests recommended by the World Health Organization are set to 45 cycles.23,24,25 When labs use these excessive cycle thresholds, you clearly end up with a grossly overestimated number of positive tests, so what we’re really dealing with is a “casedemic”26,27 — an epidemic of false positives.
The WHO updated its testing guidance January 20, 2021, to admit that that a positive PCR test alone does not equal infection, and that the “PCR threshold (CT) needed to detect virus is inversely proportional to the patient’s viral load.” Therefore, in cases where the patient’s symptoms do not correspond to the result of the test, i.e., they’re asymptomatic but test positive, they should be retested using the same or different test.
They also noted that the PCR test should only be used as an “aid” in diagnosis and not be relied upon by itself. Diagnosis must also include the observation of clinical symptoms. So, to get a diagnosis of COVID-19, you now need two positive tests if symptoms are absent, and a doctor’s judgment-call on whether symptoms appear consistent with a diagnosis of COVID-19.
However, it’s uncertain how many labs will adopt this advice to make their tests more accurate. The critique against PCR testing is further strengthened by a November 20, 2020, study in Nature Communications,28 which found no viable virus in PCR-positive cases. The study evaluated data from 9,865,404 residents of Wuhan, China, who had undergone PCR testing between May 14 and June 1, 2020.
A total of 300 tested positive but had no symptoms. Of the 34,424 people with a history of COVID-19, 107 tested positive a second time. Yet, when they did virus cultures on these 407 individuals who had tested positive (either for the first or second time), no live virus was found in any of them.
It’s unknown whether an anal swab may prove to be any different, but it’s unlikely that most people will willingly submit to an anal swab over a nasal or throat test. Further, many are now questioning whether the faulty PCR test was rolled out on purpose in an effort to crash the global economy and provide cover for the implementation of what’s known as the Great Reset.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/02/13/anal-swab-tests-deployed-to-fight-covid.aspx

Recent data reveal a nutrient found in salmon and meat may help reduce your risk of bacterial infections.1 This is especially important considering the problems surrounding antibiotic usage. Before antibiotics, the average lifespan was 47 years and infectious diseases like pneumonia were rampant.2
While antibiotics transformed health care, they do carry some risk. For example, data show that from the years 2011 to 2015 there were 69,464 emergency room visits each year for children who had an adverse reaction to taking antibiotics.3
While these numbers sound high, some experts believe it’s the tip of the iceberg,4 since this study only included children who went to the emergency room and not those who were treated in the urgent care, doctor’s office or at home.
Scientists have also been warning that bacteria are developing resistance. In 2013, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published their first Antibiotic Resistant Threats Report, finding there were at least 2 million people who acquired antibiotic-resistant infections every year, with 23,000 deaths attributed to these infections.5 However, new estimates from 2019 show there are more than 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections each year in the U.S., from which 35,000 die.6
Other researchers believe even this estimate is too low and the true number is likely far higher.7 There are options that may help prevent bacterial infections other than drugs, including manuka honey, oregano oil, an intravenous cocktail of vitamin C, thiamine and hydrocortisone, and, as mentioned, a nutrient in salmon.8
Taurine May Help Fight Bacterial Infections

Scientists from five institutes led by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease discovered one way your gut microbiota help protect you from bacterial infections.9 Although scientists have known there are benefits to living harmoniously with beneficial bacteria, the mechanism used to protect you has not been identified.
Researchers are seeking ways to harness your gut health to replace antibiotics as more antibiotic-resistant bacteria develop. One study published in the journal Cell10 revealed how pathogens could shape the colonization resistance process that protects you from bacterial infection.
The results showed that previous infections help enhance resistance in the gut microbiota, which was associated with altering bile metabolism utilizing the sulfonic acid taurine.
When the researchers supplied taurine, it was a sufficient trigger to generate the change in function and therefore enhance resistance. The results of the study revealed “a process by which the host, triggered by infection, can deploy taurine as a nutrient to nourish and train the microbiota, promoting its resistance to subsequent infection.”11
The scientists tested the effect by transferring microbiota from an animal that had experienced an infection with Klebsiella pneumoniae into a germ-free mouse.12 They discovered the transferred microbiota helped prevent an infection with K. pneumoniae.
The bacteria involved in fighting the infection were deltaproteobacteria. There are a wide variety of gram-negative pathogens in the phylum (major group) proteobacteria, including Escherichia, Salmonella and Helicobacter.13 Further analysis led the researchers to identify taurine as a compound that triggered activity in deltaproteobacteria.
A byproduct of taurine is a poisonous gas, hydrogen sulfide. The researchers theorized that with low levels of taurine, harmful bacteria can colonize the gut. When levels are higher, it produces enough hydrogen sulfide to prevent this from happening. The researchers also found that one mild infection could trigger an adaptation to help the microbiota resist the next infection.
When the animals were supplemented with taurine, it helped support the microbiota. They also discovered when the same animals were fed bismuth subsalicylate, an ingredient found in antacids, this protection was reduced since bismuth inhibits the production of hydrogen sulfide.
What Is Taurine?

The biochemical name for taurine is 2-aminoethanesulfonic acid. Although it’s commonly called an amino acid, it is a conditional compound your body does not use to create protein. Instead of a carboxyl group that is found in amino acids, taurine has a sulfide group, thus earning the name amino sulfonic acid.14
Taurine is conditional since an adult can produce it.15 However, infants are unable to produce amino sulfonic acid and thus need a diet rich in taurine to support their neurological development. The compound was first isolated from the bile of an ox, which is likely where the name came from as it is derived from the Latin word taurus, meaning bull or ox.
Taurine plays a role in the essential functions of regulating calcium, creating bile salts, balancing electrolytes and supporting the nervous system. People deficient in taurine may experience kidney dysfunction, developmental disorders, cardiomyopathy and damage to the retinal nerves.16
Amino sulfonic acid is found in high concentration in the central nervous system, skeletal muscles and eyes.17 Taurine is found in meat and other natural sources,18 including salmon, seaweed, dark chicken meat, dairy products and beef.19
Taurine levels in your body may drop in certain circumstances such as chemotherapy,20 liver disease,21 surgery, cancer, sepsis22 and diabetes.23 Since rich sources of taurine are found in meat and dairy products, people who practice a strict vegan or vegetarian diet may also be deficient.
Taurine Has an Anti-Inflammatory Effect on Your Heart

Taurine is an abundant free amino sulfonic acid and plays a critical role in several essential processes; among them is a strong general antioxidant activity.24 Amino sulfonic acid is found in higher concentrations in body tissues exposed to elevated levels of free radicals and oxidants.
This has suggested to researchers that taurine plays an anti-inflammatory role. The reaction with hypobromous acid produces a byproduct with anti-inflammatory properties. The anti-inflammatory effect has a known influence on diabetes and has demonstrated benefits on the cardiovascular system, potentially by inhibiting the renin-angiotensin system.25
This system has an influence on a variety of tissues and cells and is targeted by pharmacological interventions to help manage high blood pressure, heart failure and diabetes.26 According to researchers, nearly 50 years ago it was discovered that a taurine deficiency in cats led to retinopathy and could trigger cardiomyopathy in dogs and cats.
Data show that populations of people who eat more meat than seafood have higher death rates from heart disease. Since seafood has higher levels of taurine than meat, it suggested that amino sulfonic acid may play a role in protecting the cardiovascular system.
Research has found a correlation between taking taurine supplements and a lower risk of CVD in an animal model. In the lab, scientists observe a direct vasorelaxation when taurine is administered to a thoracic aorta in an animal in a dose-dependent fashion. Since it also plays a role in osmoregulation, it has been proposed the vasorelaxation occurs through this pathway.
Further studies have demonstrated taurine exhibits an anti-apoptotic effect on heart cells under ischemic conditions, protecting the heart cells when there is a lack of oxygen. This was demonstrated in an animal model when comparing the heart damage with and without taurine supplementation 30 days after a coronary artery occlusion.
In one animal study, researchers testing the heart muscle found that a taurine deficiency impaired energy metabolism and reduced ATP generation.27 The findings supported the hypothesis taurine deficiency starves the heart of energy, suggesting that supplementation could benefit patients who have heart failure.
More Health Benefits From Taurine

Just like the heart muscle, taurine plays a role in ensuring proper function and protecting against damage in your skeletal muscle.28 The combination of osmoregulation, membrane stabilization and regulation of intracellular calcium concentration may play a role in muscle performance.
Evidence appears to support a link between alterations in taurine levels within skeletal muscle and conditions such as muscular dystrophy and atrophy.
Lab, animal and human studies also demonstrate the role it plays in the immune system related to the antioxidant properties to protect tissue against inflammation, which researchers believe29 “give[s] support to consider taurine and taurine derivatives as potential drugs in human medicine, including infectious and chronic inflammatory disease.”
Taurine supplementation may help reduce the potential risk for complications associated with diabetes30 and may help prevent the onset of the condition. The uptake of taurine by pancreatic cells decreased the pancreatic intracellular insulin levels, suggesting to the researchers that it plays a role in regulating the release of insulin from the pancreas and could reduce elevated blood glucose levels.
Since taurine plays an essential role in the production of bile salts, which help break down fatty acids, it’s essential to metabolism and digestion.31 It is also found in high concentrations in the retina.32 Recent data demonstrated that deficiency triggered by the antiepileptic drug vigabatrin is involved in the retinal toxicity experienced by patients. This led to further investigation:33

“… suggesting that this compound may be involved in the pathophysiology of glaucoma or diabetic retinopathy. Along with other antioxidant molecules, taurine should therefore be seriously reconsidered as a potential treatment for such retinal diseases.”

Taurine also plays a role in your central and peripheral nervous system. In 2017, a review published in Birth Defects Research noted supplementation helps to promote the proliferation of brain cells required for long-term memory storage.34
An animal study showed supplementation with taurine may improve Alzheimer-like learning and memory deficits35 and seems to play a role in the development of epilepsy and autism.36
Choose Wild-Caught Over Farm-Raised Salmon

Wild-caught Alaskan sockeye salmon is rich in omega-3 fatty acids. People with the highest levels of omega-3 fats have lived 2.22 more years after age 65 than those with the lowest.37
Salmon is also high in B vitamins38 that are important for energy production.39 Phosphorus and magnesium, important for bone health, are found in salmon, as is astaxanthin, which is an anti-inflammatory antioxidant beneficial for your heart and immune system.40
However, it’s important to steer clear of farmed and genetically altered salmon and instead seek out wild-caught Alaskan sockeye salmon. Unfortunately, two-thirds of the salmon in the U.S. is imported, mostly from industrial fish farms and processing factories.41
According to the Organic Consumers Association, farmed fish are raised on a diet of processed feed that can include genetically engineered soybeans and pesticide residues, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), dioxins and antibiotics.42
The toxins can accumulate in the fat of the fish. One study sampled over 2 metric tons of wild-caught and farmed salmon collected from around the world.43 They found farmed salmon had higher concentrations of organochlorine contaminants than wild-caught salmon, and European-raised salmon were significantly more contaminated than fish farmed in North or South America.
Similarly, when the Environmental Working Group tested farmed salmon from U.S. grocery stores, they found farmed salmon had, on average, 16 times more PCBs than wild salmon, four times more PCBs than beef and 3.4 times more PCBs than other seafood.44
Farmed salmon also does not have the nutritional profile of wild salmon, as the farmed variety is far higher in omega-6 fatty acids. Often you can tell the difference between wild caught and farmed salmon just by looking at it.
The flesh of wild sockeye salmon is bright red, courtesy of the natural levels of astaxanthin. It’s also lean, so the white fat stripes you see in the meat should be thin. If the fish is pale pink with wide fat marks, the salmon is farmed.
Avoid Atlantic salmon as these are commonly from fish farms. The two designations to look for are “Alaskan salmon” and “sockeye salmon,” as Alaskan sockeye salmon are not allowed to be farmed. Canned salmon labeled Alaskan salmon is also a good, more affordable, option.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/01/30/taurine-may-help-fight-bacterial-infections.aspx

The University of Sussex conducted a survey to find out what happened when 800 people took part in “Dry January,” or abstaining from alcohol for the first month of the year. A number of benefits were reported, from losing weight to saving money, but one stood out from the crowd: 7 out of 10 people who stopped drinking alcohol for one month reported sleeping better.1
Considering that one-third of U.S. adults say they don’t get enough sleep,2 this is a significant benefit — one that could have major health implications for those who choose to imbibe regularly. In the time period spanning 2001/2002 to 2012/2013, the number of people who reported drinking alcohol in any amount shot up from 65.4% to 72.7% of Americans.3
About one-third of them engage in “high-risk drinking,” which was defined as five or more standard drinks for men or four or more drinks for women at least once a week. Among women, this type of binge drinking increased by 57.9% percent over the study period.4 Alcohol is often used as a sedative,5 enjoyed with the intent that it may help you unwind and relax at the end of the day.
General population studies suggest that up to 28% of adults have used alcohol as a sleep aid, typically for less than one week at a time, although 15% have used alcohol to promote sleep for more than four weeks.6
Behavioral studies support the notion that having two or three drinks before bed helps promote sleep, but this is short-lived. Within just a few days, the sleep-promoting effects of alcohol diminish while in the longer term, alcohol use is linked to sleep disturbances.7 More daytime sleepiness is also reported in those who used alcohol as a sleep aid.8 But what is it about alcohol that interferes with sleep?
How Your Sleep Changes When You Drink Alcohol

Alcohol can have either stimulating or sedating effects, depending on the dose and timing in relation to bedtime. In the first hour after consuming a small amount of alcohol, stimulating effects occur as your blood alcohol levels rise. If you consume a large amount of alcohol, it will lead to drowsiness as your blood alcohol levels fall.
As for moderate alcohol consumption (two to three standard drinks of 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces of spirits), dose-dependent sedation may occur that lasts for several hours.
Typically, sleep latency, or the time it takes you to fall asleep, gets shorter with more drinks, up to six total. However, alcohol is a short-acting sedative and a rebound will occur, with arousal increasing about two to three hours after your blood alcohol levels decrease to zero.9
A rebound of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep may occur during this arousal phase, during which intense dreams or nightmares may occur. Ultimately, your sleep thus becomes fragmented while even the initial sedative effects will wane as your body develops tolerance, typically after three to seven days of alcohol use.
In the long term, it’s unknown how moderate alcohol consumption affects sleep, but according to a review of 107 studies published in the journal Substance Abuse, long-lasting changes may occur:10

“Late afternoon (‘happy hour’) drinking, as much as six hours before bedtime, also disrupts sleep, even though alcohol is no longer in the brain at bedtime. This phenomenon suggests a relatively long-lasting change in sleep regulation.”

Evening Drinking Reduces Daytime Alertness

Using alcohol as a tool to fall asleep can have consequences the next day, too. Even if you’re well-rested, “reduction in alertness enough to impair performance occurs in the morning after evening drinking,”11 research shows, and your reaction time can be impaired even when your blood alcohol levels are zero. Overall, those who drink alcohol in the evening are less alert during the day and more tired than those who do not.
The risks may be especially significant for those who are already sleep-deprived, as even drinking a small amount the night before could raise the risk of traffic-related and other accidents due to severe daytime sleepiness. “Most worrisome is moderate alcohol use among chronically sleep-deprived populations such as shift workers and young adults who are at high risk for falling asleep while driving,” the researchers noted.12
Older adults should also think twice before using alcohol as a sleep aid. A 30-year study of 6,117 older adults found that men who drank more than 21 units (about 168 grams or 6 ounces) of alcohol per week were more likely to wake up several times during the night than those who drank no alcohol.
Those who maintained this level of drinking, or had an unstable alcohol consumption pattern, over the three decades of observation, were also more likely to wake several times during the night and wake up feeling tired.13 “Those with disrupted sleep should consider reducing alcohol consumption and people in this age group, particularly men, should be discouraged from using alcohol as a sleep aid,” the researchers concluded.14
Despite this, in a survey of people aged 60 and over regarding why people change their alcohol consumption later in life, 6% of men and 5% of women said they started drinking more alcohol as a way to help get to sleep.15
During Sleep, Alcohol Affects Your Heart, Breathing and More
During sleep, your body engages in important physiological restoration. Your autonomic nervous system (ANS) relaxes, but if you don’t sleep well it interferes with this process while also impairing regenerative processes and triggering metabolic disturbances.16
Finnish researchers were intrigued to find out whether alcohol intake, in turn, affected the ANS during sleep, so they tracked heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV), a measure of the variations in time elapsed between your heartbeats, among 4,098 people during the first three hours of sleep. HRV is a measure of your heart’s ability to respond to physiological and environmental stress stimuli, which, in this study’s case, was alcohol intake.17
A dose-dependent disturbance of cardiovascular relaxation during sleep was noted in relation to alcohol intake. Specifically, HRV-derived physiological recovery state decreased by 39.2% with high alcohol intake (defined as more than 0.75 grams per kilogram (g/kg) of body weight), 24% with moderate intake (>0.25-0.75 g/kg) and 9.3% with low intake (?0.25 g/kg). Regular physical activity or being young in age did not protect from this disturbance.
Alcohol also affects other aspects of sleep, and even one drink is linked with snoring in otherwise normal sleepers, while moderate drinking can lead to obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) that leads to oxygen desaturations. The Substance Abuse researchers explained:18

“Alcohol relaxes upper airway dilator muscles (decreasing airway patency) increasing nasal and pharyngeal resistance, and it prolongs the time required to arouse or awaken after an apnea occurs. Alcohol also selectively depresses hypoglossal nerve activity and alters carotid body chemoreceptor function.”

Among people with OSA, drinking alcohol may be especially problematic, as it may make the frequency and severity of apneas worse, while increasing the risk of heart attack, stroke and sudden death. The risk of sleep-related accidents is also noteworthy:19

“Alcohol’s worsening of apneic events, increasing sleep disruption and daytime fatigue, can also impair driving and increase rates of motor vehicle accidents. Among OSA subjects who consumed 14 or more drinks per week, self-reports of sleep-related accidents are fivefold higher compared to those who drink lesser amounts.”

Other ways that alcohol consumption may impair and fragment sleep include the following:20

Increased movement disorders
Increase in periodic leg movements
Promotion of sleepwalking
An association with gastritis, esophageal reflux and polyuria (excessive urination)
Unsteadiness and falls during trips to the bathroom at night

Risks Related to ‘Impaired Sleep Homeostasis’
While alcohol may increase sleep during the first half of the night, sleep during the second half of the night is more likely to be disrupted if you’ve consumed alcohol, due to a disruption in sleep homeostasis.21 In a statement, Mahesh Thakkar, Ph.D., with the University of Missouri School of Medicine, explained:22

“The prevailing thought was that alcohol promotes sleep by changing a person’s circadian rhythm — the body’s built-in 24-hour clock,” Thakkar said. “However, we discovered that alcohol actually promotes sleep by affecting a person’s sleep homeostasis — the brain’s built-in mechanism that regulates your sleepiness and wakefulness.

… Based on our results, it’s clear that alcohol should not be used as a sleep. Alcohol disrupts sleep and the quality of sleep is diminished. Additionally, alcohol is a diuretic, which increases your need to go the bathroom and causes you to wake up earlier in the morning.”

Lack of sleep and poor quality sleep, in turn, can raise your risk of chronic and acute health conditions. For instance, too little sleep may interfere with thyroid hormones and raise C-reactive protein levels (CRP), which may promote inflammation and increase the risk of Type 2 diabetes.23
Research also shows that adults who sleep less than six hours a night have a four times higher risk of catching a cold when directly exposed to the virus than those who get at least seven hours.24 Sleep is even connected with subclinical atherosclerosis, the early stages of hardening and narrowing of the arteries.
In one study, those who slept for less than six hours a night were 27% more likely to have subclinical atherosclerosis than those who slept for seven or eight hours a night.25,26 If you have trouble falling asleep, or you wake frequently during the night, it’s time to take steps to improve your sleep.
Top Steps for a Good Night’s Sleep

I do not recommend drinking alcohol, and if you’re using it as a form of sleep aid there are many other ways to get a sound’s night sleep that will leave your body truly refreshed. Be sure you’re sleeping in complete darkness, for starters, as light (even that from a night light or alarm clock) can disrupt your internal clock and your production of melatonin and serotonin, thereby interfering with your sleep.
In the morning, bright, blue light-rich sunlight signals to your body that it’s time to wake up. At night, as the sun sets, darkness should signal to your body that it’s time to sleep. You’ll want to keep the temperature cool, between 60 and 68 degrees F, and eliminate electromagnetic fields (EMFs). Ideally, shut down the electricity to your bedroom by pulling your circuit breaker before bed and turning off your Wi-Fi at night.
Other practical solutions include going to bed earlier and considering a separate bedroom if your partner is interfering with your sleep. And, as mentioned, avoid drinking alcohol, as it will likely cause you to wake up during the second half of the night and have fragmented sleep. For more tips, my 33 healthy sleep secrets provides a comprehensive list of strategies for a better night’s rest.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/01/21/why-alcohol-is-bad-for-sleep.aspx

Omega-3 fats are important for many reasons. While their brain and cardiovascular benefits are well-established, a lesser known benefit has to do with autoimmune diabetes.
According to research1,2 published in December 2020, adults who test positive for glutamic acid decarboxylase (GAD65) antibodies — a marker for Type 1 diabetes3 — can significantly reduce their risk of adult-onset diabetes by eating omega-3 rich fatty fish.
The study looked at data from 11,247 cases of adult-onset diabetes and 14,288 diabetes-free controls that participated in the Epic-InterAct case-cohort study conducted in eight European countries. As explained by the authors:4

“Baseline plasma samples were analyzed for GAD65 antibodies and phospholipid n-3 PUFAs. Adjusted hazard ratios (HRs) for incident diabetes in relation to GAD65 antibody status and tertiles of plasma phospholipid n-3 PUFA or fish intake were estimated using Prentice-weighted Cox regression …
The hazard of diabetes in antibody-positive individuals with low intake of total and fatty fish, respectively, was significantly elevated (HR 2.52 and 2.48) compared with people who were GAD65 antibody negative and had high fish intake, with evidence of additive (AP 0.44 and 0.48) and multiplicative interactions.
Individuals with high GAD65 antibody levels (?167.5 units/mL) and low total plasma phospholipid n-3 PUFAs had a more than fourfold higher hazard of diabetes …”

Results Support Previous Findings

Some of the researchers from this team first investigated the impact of fish consumption on latent autoimmune diabetes back in 2014.5 At that time, they analyzed data from a much smaller cohort that included 89 cases of latent autoimmune diabetes in adults, 462 Type 2 diabetics and 1,007 diabetes-free controls. A food frequency questionnaire was used to determine fish intake along with omega-3 supplementation and vitamin D intake.
Those who ate one or more servings of fatty fish per week had a 49% reduced risk of latent autoimmune diabetes compared to those who got less than one weekly serving.
Results showed those who ate one or more servings of fatty fish per week had a 49% reduced risk of latent autoimmune diabetes, but not Type 2 diabetes, compared to those who got less than one weekly serving. Similar associations were seen among those who took omega-3 supplements.
The Type of Fish You Choose Matters

While this is good news, it’s important to be careful about your seafood choices. Importantly, not all fish contain omega-3s. Only fatty, cold-water fish do. Examples include wild-caught Alaskan salmon, sardines, anchovies, mackerel and herring.
Farmed fish, especially farmed salmon, is best avoided altogether due to the exaggerated potential for contamination. At first glance, farmed fish may seem like a good idea to help protect wild seafood populations from overfishing, but in reality, the industry is plagued with many of the same problems surrounding land-based concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), including pollution, disease, toxicity and inferior nutritional quality.
Most farmed fish are fed genetically engineered (GE) corn and soy, which are a completely unnatural diet for marine life and are loaded with hazardous omega-6 fats. Others are fed fishmeal, which is known to accumulate industrial chemicals like PCBs and dioxins.
Remember a few important facts: The first is that the omega-6 fats that are fed to these fish are about 90% of the dangerous linoleic acid (LA) that I have recently written about. So, consuming these fish will not correct a high omega 6-to-3 ratio. Additionally, the primary action needed if your ratio is too high is to first lower your LA intake, as I review in detail in my recent article on LA.
According to toxicology researcher Jerome Ruzzin, farmed salmon is one of the most toxic foods on the market — five times more toxic than any other food product tested. Farmed fish waste also promotes algal growth that harms the water’s oxygen content, posing risks to coral reefs and other aquatic life.
From a nutritional perspective, farmed salmon have the drawbacks of containing only half the omega-3 of wild salmon6,7,8 and one-fourth the vitamin D,9 while having more than 5.5 times the amount of omega-6.10,11 Farmed salmon are also routinely exposed to antibiotics and pesticides.
Alaska does not permit aquaculture, so all Alaskan fish are wild caught. They also have some of the cleanest water and some of the best maintained and most sustainable fisheries.
To verify authenticity, look for the state of Alaska’s “Wild Alaska Pure” logo. This is one of the more reliable ones, and it’s a particularly good sign to look for if you’re buying canned Alaskan salmon, which is less expensive than salmon steaks.
In the past, sockeye salmon was another good choice as they weren’t farmed. Unfortunately, this has changed. Land-based sockeye salmon farming is now being done,12 which makes it difficult to know whether the fish is wild or not. For this reason, it may be best to avoid it unless you can verify that it’s wild-caught.
Your Omega-3 Index Is an Excellent Predictor of Mortality

Aside from affecting your risk of autoimmune diabetes, omega-3 fats also play other important roles in health. For example, research13 published in 2018 confirmed omega-3 fats can reduce your risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), coronary heart disease and all-cause mortality.
Overall, those with an omega-3 index in the highest quintile had a total mortality that was 34% lower than those in the lowest omega-3 quintile, and a 39% lower risk for CVD. The strongest association was found for the omega-3 docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). According to the authors, “The omega-3 index can serve as a marker of overall health in older Americans.”
As detailed in “More Data Support Heart Healthy Benefits of Omega-3s,” more recent research found fish oil consumption lowered the risk of all-cause mortality by 13% and cardiovascular mortality by 16%.
DHA for Your Brain Health
DHA is also crucial for brain health. In my book, “Superfuel,” cowritten with James DiNicolantonio, Pharm.D., we explain how DHA is an essential structural component of your brain, and is found in high levels in your neurons, the cells of your central nervous system.

When your omega-3 intake is inadequate, your nerve cells become stiff and more prone to inflammation as the missing omega-3 fats are substituted with omega-6 instead.

Once your nerve cells become rigid and inflamed, proper neurotransmission from cell to cell and within cells become compromised. Low DHA levels have been linked to memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease, and some studies suggest degenerative brain diseases may potentially be reversible with sufficient DHA.14,15

DHA also stimulates the Nrf2 pathway, one of the most important transcription factors that regulates cellular oxidation and reduction, and aids in detoxification.16 Additionally, DHA increases heme oxygenase 117 (a protein produced in response to oxidative stress) and upregulates antioxidant enzymes — all of which are important for brain health.

The omega-3 eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA), meanwhile, appears to be particularly beneficial in the treatment of depression,18 as it helps lower levels of tumor necrosis factor alpha, interleukin 1 beta and prostaglandin E2 — three immune chemicals that tend to be elevated in those with depression.
The Many Health Benefits of Omega-3 Fats

Other health benefits of omega-3 fats include the following:

Reducing inflammation — This in turn can be helpful for those suffering with rheumatoid arthritis by reducing stiffness and pain.19 Women who suffer from menstrual pain may also experience milder pain.20,21

Optimizing muscle building and bone strength — Omega-3 fats help your body build healthy muscle mass, including people suffering from cancer who may experience cachexia.22 Omega-3 fats can also help improve your bone strength by improving the utilization of calcium in your body. This may lead to a reduction in the development of osteoporosis.23

Improving metabolic syndrome24 and insulin resistance.25

Improving mental health and behavior — Demonstrated benefits have been shown for children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), including reduced aggression, hyperactivity,26 impulsivity,27 oppositional behavior28 and restlessness.29 Omega-3 is associated with lowered risk for other neurological/cognitive dysfunction as well, including: memory loss, brain aging, learning disorders and ADHD,30 autism and dyslexia.31

Protecting your vision — DHA is a major structural element in your eye and brain.32 Low levels of DHA may increase your risk for age related macular degeneration.33

Reducing your risk of kidney disease34 and colon cancer.35

The Importance of Phospholipid-Bound Omega-3

While fish oil is a well-known source of omega-3 fats, it has several drawbacks, the lack of phospholipids being one of them. DHA and EPA are water insoluble and therefore cannot be transported in their free form in your blood. They must be packaged into lipoprotein vehicles such as phospholipids. This is primarily why the bioavailability of krill oil is so much higher than fish oil, because in fish oil, the DHA and EPA are bound to triglycerides.
When you take fish oil, your liver has to attach it to phosphatidylcholine in order for it to be efficiently utilized. Phospholipids are also one of the principal compounds in high-density lipoproteins (HDL), which you want more of, and by allowing your cells to maintain structural integrity, phospholipids help your cells function optimally.
Importantly, your brain cannot readily absorb DHA unless it’s bound to phosphatidylcholine, and while krill oil contains phosphatidylcholine naturally, fish oil does not. As the name implies, phosphatidylcholine is composed partly of choline, the precursor for the vital neurotransmitter acetylcholine, which sends nerve signals to your brain, and choline itself is crucial for brain development, learning and memory.
Research36 by Rhonda Patrick, Ph.D., has highlighted the value of DHA bound to phospholipids, showing this form may actually reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in those with the apolipoprotein E4 (APOE4) gene, which lowers the typical age of onset of this degenerative brain disorder.
Two hallmarks of Alzheimer’s are amyloid beta plaques and tau tangles, both of which impair normal brain functioning. Alzheimer’s patients also have reduced glucose transport into their brains, and this is one of the reasons why plaque and tangles form and accumulate in the first place. According to Patrick,37 DHA encourages your brain’s uptake of glucose by regulating the structure and function of glucose transporters, proteins located at your blood-brain barrier.
While eating DHA-rich fish has been shown to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s in APOE4 carriers, taking fish oil has not demonstrated the same efficacy. According to Patrick, this variation in response appears to be related to the different ways in which the two forms of DHA are metabolized and ultimately transported into your brain.
When the triglyceride form of DHA is metabolized, most of it turns into nonesterified DHA, while the phospholipid form is metabolized primarily into DHA-lysophosphatidylcholine (DHA-lysoPC). While both of these forms can cross the blood-brain barrier to reach your brain, the phospholipid form does so far more efficiently.
According to Patrick, people with APOE4 have a faulty nonesterified DHA transport system, and this may be why they’re at increased risk for Alzheimer’s. The good news is that DHA-lysoPC can bypass the tight junctions, thereby improving DHA transport, and for those with one or two APOE4 variants, taking the phospholipid form of DHA may therefore lower their risk of Alzheimer’s more effectively.
Oxidized Linoleic Acid Drives Many Disease Processes

One of the most hazardous fats in the human diet, in my view, is omega-6 linoleic acid (LA). Processed vegetable oils are primary sources of LA, but animal foods such as chicken and farmed salmon also contain high amounts of it, thanks to the fact that the animals are fed LA-rich grains.

There’s evidence to suggest excessive amounts of LA play a role in most chronic diseases, especially top killers such as heart disease. Evidence implicating excessive consumption of LA as a direct cause of heart disease includes, but is not limited to, the following:38

The amount of LA in adipose tissue and platelets is positively associated with coronary artery disease, and studies39 measuring changes in LA concentrations in adipose tissue in Americans show concentrations increased from 9.1% in 1959 to 21.5% in 2008. This increase also paralleled increases in the prevalence of obesity, diabetes and asthma.

Conversely, the long-chained omega-3s DHA and EPA have been shown to protect against coronary artery disease, which is why maintaining a healthy balance between omega-3 and omega-6 is so important.

Patients with atherosclerosis have higher amounts of LA oxidation products in their plasma, low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and atherosclerotic plaques.

Oxidation of LA begins before any clinical signs of atherosclerosis become apparent.

When the endothelium (the interior lining of your blood vessels) is exposed to LA, LDL transfer across the endothelium is increased and this is an essential step in the atherosclerotic process.

Low LA diets reduce LDL oxidation.

A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials in humans showed that when saturated fat and trans fat are replaced with omega-6 PUFAs, all-cause mortality, ischemic heart disease mortality and cardiovascular mortality increase.

Oxidation products of LA are found in infarcted tissue.

The LA metabolite 9-HODE is a strong promoter of inflammation, and may be both a marker for and inducer of atherosclerosis.

Do You Know Your Omega-3 Index?
An omega-3 deficiency leaves you vulnerable to several chronic diseases and lifelong challenges. Optimizing your levels is truly a foundational strategy to attaining and maintaining good health. The best way to determine if you’re eating enough food with omega-3 is to get an omega-3 index test.

The omega-3 index is a measure of the amount of EPA and DHA in the membranes of your red blood cells (RBCs). Your index is expressed as a percent of your total RBC fatty acids. The omega-3 index has been validated as a stable, long-term marker of your omega-3 status.

An omega-3 index over 8% is associated with the lowest risk of death from heart disease, while an index below 4% places you at the highest risk of heart disease-related mortality.

I firmly believe an omega-3 index test is one of the most important annual health screens that everyone needs. GrassrootsHealth makes testing easy through its D*Action+Omega-3 consumer-sponsored research project.40 You can find the GrassrootsHealth omega-3 index test kit both in my online store and on the GrassrootsHealth website.41
Please remember: If you find that you have a high omega 6-to-3 ratio, your primary action needed is to first lower your LA intake, as I review in detail in my recent article on LA.
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/01/21/importance-of-omega-3-fats.aspx

Data from Japan show drinking oolong tea may help your body burn fat, independent of the effects of caffeine. Around the world, tea is one of the most popular beverages, second only to water. In popularity, 84% of tea consumed is black; 15% is green; and the remaining 1% is split between oolong, white and dark teas.1
According to the Tea Association, total sales in 1990 were $1.84 billion, which rose to $12 billion by 2016.2 The market continues to grow, albeit at a slower rate, with reported sales of $12.67 billion in 2019. The Tea Association hypothesizes several trends could be affecting their industry, including a healthier outlook of consumers and a greater number of people who practice alternative nutrition such as gluten-free, dairy-free, vegetarian and keto diet plans.
On any day, nearly half the people in the U.S. are drinking tea, with a greater concentration of tea drinkers found in the South and Northeast. Although black tea is the preferred drink, it may be time to consider the less bitter and flavorful oolong tea.
A Cup of Oolong in the Evening Raises Fat Burning at Night

A recently published study from a team of researchers at the University of Tsukuba in Japan found that drinking oolong tea can help your body burn fat, even while you’re sleeping.3 The study took place over 14 days and engaged 12 non-obese men who drank either oolong tea, caffeine or a placebo at breakfast and lunch each day.
On Day 14, 24-hour measurements were recorded. The researchers found that drinking caffeine or oolong tea raised fat burning by approximately 20% without any effect on energy expenditure.4
However, they also found a greater decrease was experienced by those drinking the oolong tea suggesting there was an unidentified ingredient in the tea that has a greater effect on fat oxidation.5 Additionally, it appeared that the effect on fat burning was suppressed immediately after meals and occurred during sleep.
The researchers also found drinking two cups of oolong tea per day did not interfere with the participants’ sleep habits. Past research has demonstrated caffeine at greater than 100 milligrams (mg) can increase energy expenditure, but in the present study the amount of caffeine ingested did not increase energy expenditure.
This suggested to the researchers that the participants became tolerant over the two weeks of routine caffeine ingestion. While the researchers did measure fat burning, they noted two weeks was not a long enough duration to assess the effects this intervention could have on body composition. The senior study author commented in a press release:6

“Like all teas, oolong contains caffeine, which impacts energy metabolism by increasing our heart rate. However, studies suggest that tea consumption may also increase the breakdown of fat, independent of the effects of caffeine. We therefore wanted to examine the effects of oolong consumption versus caffeine alone on energy and fat metabolism among a group of healthy volunteers.

The stimulatory effects of oolong tea on fat breakdown during sleep could have real clinical relevance for controlling body weight. However, we need to determine whether the effects we observed in the 2-week study translate into actual body fat loss over a prolonged period.

In addition, we want to trial a decaffeinated oolong tea to better distinguish the effects of caffeine from other components of tea, which will help us understand exactly how oolong helps with fat breakdown.”

Green, Black or Oolong?

Although the health benefits of green tea are well covered, black tea is the most commonly consumed tea in the U.S. As the health benefits of oolong tea are not as well publicized, one team of researchers set out to assess how well a group of dental students understood the benefits of oolong tea.7
Using a set of questionnaires, they drew data from 100 participants using an online survey. Among the students, only 19% had ever heard of oolong tea, and of those only 55% were aware of the health benefits.
Interestingly, the Tea Association says that black, green, oolong and all dark and white teas are all made from the leaves of the same tree, an evergreen named Camellia sinensis.8 The difference in the taste and color happen when the leaves are processed. But, no matter which type of tea it is, or whether it’s caffeinated or decaf, it’s only 24 hours from the time tea leaves are picked until they’re packed.9
Before processing starts, the tea leaves are graded and sorted. The most common method of processing tea leaves is the Orthodox method during which the leaves go through four stages, including withering, rolling, oxidation and drying.
It’s in the oxidation stage that the color, taste and strength of the tea is determined. The leaves are laid out and left at 26 degrees Celsius (78.8 degrees Fahrenheit) for 30 to 120 minutes. During this time, oxidation occurs, which changes the color of the leaves.
The oxidation process is left out when making green tea, which gives the tea leaves a light fresh flavor. Black tea goes through the longest oxidation and oolong is made from partially oxidized leaves. The oxidation goal for tea leaves destined to become oolong is 70% green and 30% brown, enough to give a delicate color and fruity aroma.
The shape of the leaves and flavor of oolong tea can vary depending on where it’s grown and how it’s processed.10 For instance, oolong tea from Taiwan is traditionally less oxidized and the famous Chinese teas are grown in a harsh environment, which gives the leaves a rich flavor.
Oolong Shifts Salivary and Gut Microbiota

In addition to raising fat metabolism, oolong tea also has an impact on your oral and gut microbiota. One study, published in the journal Nutrients, evaluated the oral microbiota of three healthy adults who drank 1 liter (33 ounces) of tea daily for eight weeks.11 Before the intervention, during the treatment and after the study, the participants’ salivary microbiota were sampled, sequenced and analyzed. The data showed:12

“[O]olong tea consumption reduced salivary bacterial diversity and the population of some oral disease related bacteria, such as Streptococcus sp., Prevotella nanceiensis, Fusobacterium periodonticum, Alloprevotella rava, and Prevotella elaninogenica.”

The results suggested that drinking oolong tea for an extended period of time could change your salivary microbiota and have a protective effect on dental health. Several studies have also evaluated the effect oolong tea has on modulating human intestinal microbiota in the lab and in animal models.
One study published in Food Research International demonstrated the compounds commonly found in oolong tea, including epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), (-)-gallocatechin gallate (GCG) and epigallocatechin?3?(3”?O?methyl) gallate (EGCg3”Me),13 modulated bacterial growth in the intestines.14 They inhibited the growth of harmful bacteria and helped beneficial bacteria to proliferate.
A second study evaluated the effect tea had on gut microbiota in light of the known anti-obesity properties.15 The results of this animal model suggested drinking tea substantially increases the diversity and structure of gut microbiota, which may have an impact on fat burning.
Researchers also demonstrated the polyphenols extracted from green tea, oolong tea and black tea could modulate intestinal flora and produce a greater number of short-chain fatty acids, contributing to a healthy gut microbiome.16
More Health Benefits Associated With Oolong Tea

Oolong tea is also rich in antioxidants — beneficial compounds that help reduce the effects of free radicals and reactive oxygen species.17 This plays a role in the development of various diseases, including diabetes, stroke, cancer and rheumatoid arthritis.
One study evaluated the effect of oolong tea on bone mineral density in 476 postmenopausal women.18 They were questioned about their lifestyle, types of tea they drink, demographic features and health status.
When researchers compared the tea drinkers against the non-tea drinkers, they found those drinking oolong tea had higher bone mineral density. It was significantly higher in those who drank one to five cups of tea per day but did not go up for those drinking more than five cups per day.
The antioxidants, caffeine and theanine found in oolong tea may also contribute to a lower risk of cognitive impairment and decline that researchers have found in community-living Chinese adults 55 years and older who consistently drank oolong or black tea.19
In a review of the literature, researchers identified an increase in insulin activity.20 This occurred with black, green and oolong teas with an increase in insulin activity of at least 15-fold in laboratory fat cell assays. Oolong tea also reduced plasma glucose and is believed to be an effective adjunctive treatment of Type 2 diabetes.
Oolong tea has been associated with a reduction in heart disease. In one study with 76,979 Japanese adults, those who drank 8 ounces or more of oolong tea each day significantly reduced their risk of cardiovascular disease mortality.21 In a separate study, those drinking one to two cups of green tea or oolong tea each day significantly reduced their risk of stroke.22
EGCG Helps Improve Zinc Absorption

During flu season and the COVID-19 pandemic, it bears remembering that the EGCG found in green, black and oolong tea can help improve absorption of zinc. Zinc is an essential mineral and a cofactor for nearly 3,000 proteins in the body.23
In addition to this, it is crucial for healthy immune functioning. Zinc deficiency has been shown to impair your immune function24 as it modulates cell mediated immunity and acts as an anti-inflammatory agent and antioxidant.25
Although there’s no cure for viral infections, your body uses a process to fight viruses that includes zinc. It has also demonstrated the ability to reduce the length of a cold by an average of 33%.26
One effective treatment for the early symptoms of COVID-19 has been a combination of hydroxychloroquine and zinc. Hydroxychloroquine is routinely used in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and other autoimmune diseases.27
The hydroxychloroquine acts as an ionophore, driving zinc into the cells where it can impair the replication of the SARS-CoV-2 RNA virus.28 Beyond immune health, zinc has an impact on wound healing, age-related macular degeneration, sense of smell and taste29 and blood sugar balance.30
EGCG is a major polyphenol component found in tea and has demonstrated the ability to act as a zinc ionophore, transporting zinc across the cell membrane.31 A study published in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry used a lab model to demonstrate EGCG and quercetin could rapidly increase levels of zinc in cells in the laboratory.32
They hypothesized that the ionophore activity of the dietary polyphenols tested may play a significant role in raising the levels of intracellular zinc and thus may be responsible for many of the biological actions attributed to the polyphenols.
Get the Most From Your Tea

While drinking oolong tea is healthy, using tea bags adds a level of toxins you don’t want. Tea bags may be more convenient, but many are made with heat resistant polypropylene that prevents the bag from breaking apart in hot water and releases minute pieces of plastic in each drink.33
Paper tea bags are treated with epichlorohydrin, which is a chemical that prevents tears and has been found to be a probable human carcinogen.34 Instead, seek out loose tea leaves and store them in an airtight container kept in a dry, dark cabinet away from direct sunlight and heat.
Since the processing techniques used affect the ideal brewing temperature, look for the directions on the package of tea you buy. However, here are some general tips to consider:35

Use fresh, pure filtered water. Do not use distilled water as it will give your tea a flat flavor.
In general, the tea should be steeped between 180 degrees and 200 degrees Fahrenheit for one to three minutes.
Oolong teas can be used multiple times. With each cup the leaves open a little more, which releases more flavor. You may be able to get up to five uses out of a high-quality tea.
Oolong tea tastes best after steeping for a short time, so it’s a good idea to taste it after the recommended time before deciding to steep it longer.
Cover the tea while it steeps to keep all the heat in the vessel and try drinking it without any additives, such as milk or sugar, to improve the health benefits and appreciate the handcrafted flavor of the tea.

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/01/22/oolong-tea-may-help-shed-pounds-while-you-sleep.aspx